Our film to storm Cannes

Shchastia Moie, shot by director Serhii Loznytsia, will be shown internationally under the name You, My Joy. The readers will remember that in line with its tradition, the cinema forum on the Cote d’Azur will last from 12 through 23 May. Cannes is one of the world’s most famous film festivals and is always attended by superstars. For the first time a Ukrainian film will take part in the feature competition.

You, My Joy, with a production budget of nearly two million euros, was co-produced by Oleh Kokhan (Ukraine, SOTA Cinema Group), Heino Deckert (Germany, MA.JA.DE Filmproduktion), and Joost de Vries (Holland, Lemming Film).

Today, against the background of the utterly deplorable state of the national cinema, the incessant work done by Kokhan and his team looks both patriotic and devoted. Just in recent years, the SOTA Cinema Group enabled the release of movies by Roman Balayan, Kira Muratova, Krzysztof Zanussi, and other renowned film directors whose works have earned several of Ukraine’s prestigious international cinema awards.

You, My Joy is the feature film debut of the well-known documentary director Serhii Loznytsia, based on his own script. In the interview for The Day, published last fall, at the very start of the shooting, Loznytsia said:

“I love the words said by Aleksei German Sr., ‘I am not a doctor, I’m the pain, and I have to embody this pain.’ If you have not recorded it, it doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, the space we exist in is very aggressive, and we are all affected. I don’t know just how much, but we are.

“I believe it’s important to at least provoke a person to reflect on what is going on in their world and the people living in it, as well as what is happening to themselves. I’m worried about it because as you start reading, writing, or thinking about it, you realize that there are questions without answers. Nevertheless, they need to be asked.”

The seemingly unpretentious plot has the clear-cut, graphic features of a bitter parable about what is ruinous for a human being.

“Our film isn’t about window-dressing,” emphasized the producer Kokhan. “The people are not shown as conventional, idyllic entities, with exaggerated local peculiarity like in Kusturica. Nor are they depicted following the ‘good guy/bad guy’ model which is traditional for Hollywood. Instead, we show them the way they are in reality – even if it is scary at times.”

Loznytsia’s film will compete for the main prize alongside 15 other participants, including Nikita Mikhalkov’s Utomlionnyie Solntsem-2 (aka Burnt by the Sun 2), Takeshi Kitano’s Outrage, Bertrand Tavernier’s La Princesse de Montpensier, Rachid Bouchareb’s Hors la loi (aka Outlaws), Mathieu Amalric’s Tournee (aka On Tour), Mike Leigh’s Another Year, and other movies.

“I’m really grateful to Giles Jacob and Thierry Fremaux for the invitation to the Cannes festival,” said the director in his interview for The Day. “It is a great honor for me and for our superb international team who has invested so much effort in this movie. Working on the film was a bliss, and the invitation to Cannes – a gift of fortune.

“I do not consider the participation in the Cannes film festival as a competition. For me it is first and foremost an opportunity to show my work to the most professional and experienced audience in the world. I hope that this audience will be favorable to You, My Joy.”

We have already mentioned that the film was created by an international crew comprising the Romanian cameraman Oleg Mutu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), the set decorator from Petersburg Kirill Shuvalov (Shultes), and the Belarusian sound director Vladimir Golovnitsky (The Blockade, How I Ended This Summer).

The cast includes Vladimir Golovin, Olga Shuvalova, Aleksei Vertkov, Boris Kamorzin, Timofei Tribuntsev, Maria Varsami, as well as the inhabitants of the Chernihiv oblast, next to the Ukraine-Russia border, where You, My Joy was filmed. The Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov, familiar to the European audience due to his part in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, played a cop from Moscow.

The style of You, My Joy is very close to the documentary genre, although neither the director nor the cameraman make the spectators endure too many details. They just offer their own vision of reality, because at the very start of the shooting Loznytsia emphasized that the impressions which had prompted the making of this film were caused by the galloping degradation and extinction of the space where people speak the language of Andrei Platonov’s Foundation Pit.

“Together with the cameraman, we wanted to create the effect of a documentary,” continues the director. “We used a hand-held camera and lighting close to the natural one. I looked for actors who came the closest to existing organically on the filming site.

“I was excited to work with lay people. The story which can be read from one’s face is precious and always unique. Unfortunately, professional actors’ faces, polished by their trade, sometimes lose this individuality.”

Both the script and the filmed material are a subtle, stylish, and up to date. The work which is not limited to geographical boundaries of the characters’ place of residence. It rises to a painful and confidential level of speaking about universal human values. We can only wish success to its creators, who represent our country with dignity. The more so that one more work produced by Kokhan can be found in another festival program. This is also a co-production, this time Franco-Ukrainian; it is the legendary Otar Iosseliani’s new film Chantrapas. We hope that after Cannes, the Ukrainian audience will also be able to see these films.